


Side Effects Of Drifting May Include Hypersomnia, Temporary Telepathy, And Excessive Cuddling

by decadent_mousse



Series: Side Effects May Include... [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Extremely Awkward Flirting, Fluff, M/M, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-27 11:46:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse/pseuds/decadent_mousse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newton didn’t lie down on the bed so much as collapse backwards onto it.  The mattress squeaked loudly in protest.  He stared up at the ceiling for a long while before finally saying, “I feel like I could sleep for a week.”</p><p>Hermann scoffed.  “Newton, I don’t think I’ve ever known you to sleep uninterrupted for seven hours, I highly doubt you’d manage to do it for seven days.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Side Effects Of Drifting May Include Hypersomnia, Temporary Telepathy, And Excessive Cuddling

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to my beta for being awesome and for confirming for me that, yes, "mulishly" is indeed a word.

Newton didn’t lie down on the bed so much as collapse backwards onto it.  The mattress squeaked loudly in protest.  He stared up at the ceiling for a long while before finally saying, “I feel like I could sleep for a week.”

Hermann scoffed.  “Newton, I don’t think I’ve ever known you to sleep uninterrupted for seven _hours_ , I highly doubt you’d manage to do it for seven _days_.”

“I don’t know, man, I’m pretty tired,” the other man replied with a groan, eyes fluttering shut behind the cracked lenses of his glasses.

Newton hadn’t bothered to go get himself looked over by a doctor despite his various injuries – of which he had several, and those were just the ones that were immediately apparent.  He looked soggy and miserable, and Hermann had half a mind to drag him to the infirmary for the medical evaluation.  However, he too was exhausted, and he knew that even under the best of circumstances Newton was mulishly stubborn about doing things he didn’t want to do.  Hermann shuddered to think of how difficult he’d be in _these_ circumstances. 

After a few moments of uninterrupted silence, Hermann assumed the other man had fallen asleep.  He himself felt nearly dead on his feet and in desperate need of rest.

He turned to leave.

“Hey, where are you going?”

Hermann looked over his shoulder.  Newton had propped himself up on his elbows and was, apparently, not asleep.

“To my own quarters.  Where else?”

He blinked.  “Oh, I just figured you could stay here.”

Hermann stared at him, uncomprehending.

“I mean,” he added quickly, “if you want to.  If not, that’s cool.  I just thought… Well, you’re already here, we’re both really tired...  I know the bed’s not huge, but there’s plenty of room for the both of us, and I’ll be a perfect gentleman, I promise.  Cross my heart and hope to–“

“Don’t,” Hermann cut in.  It came out far sharper than he’d intended, but whenever he closed his eyes he could still see Newt bleeding and twitching on the floor of their lab.  What Newton had done hadn’t been the first reckless and dangerous thing he’d done in the time Hermann had known him, but for those few minutes he had feared  it was going to be the last.

He looked towards the door, eyes burning.  It was the exhaustion, he told himself, and nothing more – certainly not _tears_.  He refused to have an emotional breakdown in the middle of Newton’s room.

Behind him, he heard the mattress creak.  “Hey, man…”

“I’m…  It’s fine.”  It wasn’t, really, and he wasn’t, really. 

He had spent most of the past twenty-four hours compartmentalizing all his concerns and assorted emotions and setting them aside to be dealt with later because there had been more important things to focus on at the time, but now that it was all over, it was all finally catching up with him.  The worst part of it was that he was almost certain that Newton was picking up on some of it through the lingering effects of their drift.  Maybe even _all_ of it, though Hermann desperately hoped not.

All common sense screamed at him to just leave before things got awkward – or more awkward than they already were, at this point – but he found himself extremely reluctant to leave. 

He didn’t want to be alone, he realized.  He wasn’t sure if that was _his_ realization or Newton’s.  Maybe it didn’t matter.  Besides, he reasoned, since his colleague stubbornly refused to get looked at by a medical professional, at least this way he could keep an eye on him himself.

“I’ll stay.”

~

Newton nudged him with his shoulder.  “Hey, Hermann, are you awake?”

“I am now.”

“Sorry, I just, y’know…”

If that sentence had meant to be intelligible, it had fallen short of its goal.  “What?”

“I’m… not going anywhere.  You know that, right?  You’re stuck with me.”  Newt’s voice was soft and serious – unusually so by his standards.

Hermann sighed.  “Yes, I know.”

He knew what Newton was going to do two minutes before he actually did it, but he still startled slightly when his fingertips brushed across the back of his hand.  He felt vaguely embarrassed at the way his heart beat a little faster at the contact – for God’s sake, he was an adult, not some besotted teenager.

Newt’s incredulous laughter washed over him in a warm wave.  “‘Besotted?’  Really, dude?”

Face burning, Hermann fought the urge to smother himself with a pillow.  He settled for scowling at the ceiling instead.  “I’m so glad you find this amusing, Newton.”

“Oh, come on, Hermann, don’t be that way.  I think it’s cute.”

Cute?  God help him.

Newton laid his hand over his.  Without giving it much thought, Hermann turned his hand upward and intertwined his fingers with Newt’s.  They were holding hands, he realized.  They were lying very close to one another, shoulders pressed together, and they were holding hands.

“Breathe, dude.  You look like your head’s gonna explode.  Is this okay?  Do you… want me to let go or move over or–“

“No,” Hermann blurted.  “No, it’s… fine.  I, ah, quite like it.  Actually.”  He was so terrible at this.

“Oh.  Oh, good.  Me too.” 

Newton was apparently only marginally less terrible at this than he was.  Hermann found that somewhat comforting. 

~

The first thing Hermann noticed as he began to wake up was that his shoulder felt very warm and very wet.  It took him five and a half minutes to reach a high enough level of awareness to realize that the source was Newton, who had at some point – presumably in his sleep – rolled onto his side, put his head on Hermann’s shoulder, and proceeded to drool there.  Judging by the size of the wet spot on Hermann’s shirt, he had been there awhile for several hours – that, or he had alarmingly productive saliva glands.

Hermann didn’t appreciate being drooled on, and he briefly considered getting up.  Newt was still loosely holding his hand, and his other arm had wrapped itself around Hermann’s, hugging it close to his chest.  It wouldn’t have been particularly difficult to wriggle loose, but he was almost certain he wouldn’t be able to do it without waking him. 

He decided he could suffer for a little awhile longer.

~

A little while longer turned out to be several hours later.  Hermann woke up alone – a warm Newt-shaped indentation in the mattress and a still-damp drool stain on his shoulder the only signs that the whole thing hadn’t been some bizarre dream. 

 _“I’m… not going anywhere.”_   And then he had indeed gone somewhere.  Typical.

Before Hermann had time to wonder where Newton had gotten off to, the bathroom door opened and Newton emerged, wearing nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms covered in cartoon-ish depictions of kaiju and a towel draped across his shoulders. 

His face brightened when he noticed Hermann.  “Oh hey, you’re awake!”

Hermann sat up with a groan.  He didn’t realize a blanket had been draped over him until he went to swing his legs over the side of the bed and got tangled up in it.  The rumpled, fluffily textured face of Godzilla glared at him aggressively from its position on his lap –  Hermann glared right back.  His leg was a bit stiffer than usual, but he wasn’t in nearly as much pain as he would’ve expected after all the running around he’d done recently. 

“I’m hungry,” Newton continued, enthusiastically scrubbing at his wet hair with the towel.  “Are you hungry?  I was thinking I’d go down to the mess hall and get us something to eat.”

“You may want to put a shirt on first.”

“Y’know, after everything that’s happened, I seriously doubt they’d kick me out of the Shatterdome for going around shirtless,” his colleague groused, but he was already heading over to a small dresser on the other side of the room.

Hermann caught himself staring at the swirls of colorful ink that covered most of his upper body – the way the tattoos rippled and almost seemed to come to life as Newt hastily pulled on a wrinkled t-shirt. 

“Hey, hey, my eyes are up here, buddy.”

Alarmed, Hermann jerked his gaze upward, focusing very intently on a nearby wall.

Newton laughed, walking over to where Hermann was perched on the edge of the bed and sitting down beside him.  “Dude, you really need to lighten up.  I, uh, don’t mind you looking.  You could even look at my tattoos in greater detail sometime.  If you want.”

Hermann glanced at him and noticed, with a certain degree of amusement, that there was a blush creeping its way across his cheeks.  “I think I would like that, yes.”

“Not, like, _right now_ , though,” Newt said hurriedly.  “Food, first.  Then more sleep because I still feel wrecked, and _you_ still look wrecked, and then… uh, maybe we should go out sometime?”

“Go out?”

“Yes, Hermann.  You know, that thing people do when they’re interested in each other.  It’s called ‘dating.’”

A smile tugged at Hermann’s lips.  “Dating?”

Newton snorted.  “Okay, now I _know_ you’re screwing with me.  Mess with me and I’ll go find some other handsome mathmetician to spend the rest of my night with.”

“I highly doubt you’d be able to find one on such short notice,” he sniffed.

The other man let out a startled laugh.  “Oh my God, was that… was that a _joke_?”

“Are you going to go get that food, or were you planning on sitting here for another hour?”

“Fine, fine, I’m going.”  Newt leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.  “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

~

Twenty-five minutes later, Newton returned, wrestling the door open with one hand and doing his best to balance a truly obscene amount of food on a tray that was probably meant to carry only about half as much. 

Hermann stood, and managed to rescue the tray just as it looked ready to topple over.  “My God, how did you manage to get away with this much food?”

Newton shrugged as he closed the door.  “Oh, you know.  I batted my eyelashes and gave them the puppy eyes.” 

“Really.”

“Well, and I _might’ve_ told them drifting with a kaiju brain had been veryhard on me physically and that I was worried if I didn’t build my energy reserves back up as soon as possible I might slip into a coma and die.”

“ _Newton_.”

“It _could_ be true!  Who knows!”  He wobbled in an exaggerated fashion.  “I amfeeling kind of light-headed.”

“You are impossible,” Hermann snorted as he sat the tray of food down on a nearby table.

They ate in relative silence, which spoke volumes about how tired they both still were.  Most meals they’d eaten together in the past had been punctuated by heated arguments and the occasional thrown utensil.  Of course, a lot had changed between then and now.

“I should return to my room,” Hermann eventually said.

Newton, who had been poking absently at a small pile of macaroni and cheese, looked up with alarm.  “What?  Why?”

“I need a shower, and fresh clothes.”  He had considered just using Newton’s facilities, but even if by some miracle the other man hadn’t used up all the hot water earlier, that still would’ve left Hermann without anything to wear – he doubted Newt had anything that would fit him.

“Okay, but you’re… coming back, right?”

Oh.  _Oh_.  “What?  Yes.  Of course, yes.”  He licked his lips, mouth suddenly feeling quite dry.  “That is, if you want–“

Newt relaxed visibly and gave him a warm smile.  “Dude, I _definitely_ want.”

~

By the time he got back, Newton was curled up under the covers with his face buried in his pillow.  Hermann closed the door as quietly as possible and made his way over to the empty side of the bed. 

He was certain he’d managed to ease into the bed completely undetected until he both heard and felt the rustling of the bedsheets.  A few moments later, Newt’s arm snaked around his waist. 

“You’re going to drool on me again, aren’t you?” 

Newt made a sound that couldn’t seem to decide whether it wanted to be a laugh or a yawn.  “Probably, yeah,” he said, nuzzling Hermann’s neck and planting a soft, sleepy kiss there. 

Hermann could see many, many nights of being drooled upon in his future, and resigned himself to his fate with a weary sigh.  Well, if that was the price he had to pay, he supposed he could learn to live with it.


End file.
